2017 — Curating the exhibition Heading for a Land of Eternal Sunshine by Nina Wengel (DK) and Annika Unterburg (DE). xpon-art, Hamburg, Germany.
Tijana Mišković has been working with Nina Wengel for many years, but Annika Unterburg she only met once in Hamburg on a curatorial research trip. Led by an intuition, she decided to put these two artists together in an exhibition — a visual dialogue focusing on the notion of time and language through the use of repetitions.
Why repetitions? When used artistically, repetitions stop being a practical method and become an eternal process — they become rituals. With time these rituals do not only become a part of the artistic practice but also a grammar for the artistic language.
In Heading for a Land of Eternal Sunshine, Nina Wengel shows a series of paintings with a repetitive sunset motif. Almost like a pattern, the motif is painted in different sizes and on different materials such as wood, plastic and cardboard. The many sunsets clearly show that her artistic production is driven by a certain kind of necessity that we cannot see an end to. On a symbolic level the sunsets have a beautiful and romantic connotation, but looking at the almost manic quantity they acquire darker connotations — like trauma or death. The sunset can be a symbol of a day or a life ending.
Annika Unterburg shows a series of “Bildobjekte” and a sculpture. Most of the works have fishing baits and hooks mounted on a painted colour surface. A fishing bait is both an attractive and deadly object. In her works, Unterburg examines the relationship between the beautiful — understood as both the good and the evil. Something threatening is at stake in her works, which we can sense in the colour black used in her paintings. There is something menacing in the tension that develops while waiting for the fish to bite — the waiting for the moment that will mark the fish’s transition from life to death. Two different time perceptions are at stake: the more meditative circular sense of time, as in meditation, and the more linear one that belongs to strategic thinking.
The philosopher and linguist Per Aage Brandt explains in one of his theories that the human language related to imagination was developed by fishing women: “To fish (without sailing) is especially a matter of standing in the water and waiting, and then, when conscious actions reflect themselves mimetically and readably, the focus will necessarily be intentionally on the absent object — the fish — as the subject for the waiting.” In other words, our ability to create images of something that does not exist — to relate to abstractions as a communication method — is associated with the act of waiting. In Annika Unterburg’s works, the waiting is connected to the fish, while in Nina Wengel’s it relates to the sun, the new day, and not least the hope — the belief that there is a reason to go on.
During the installation of artworks, Tijana Mišković collaborated with the two artists in order to create a single, space-related exhibition connected to the characteristics of the venue. The raw aesthetics of the xpon-art space and its partially ghostly atmosphere supported the concept of the exhibition: something absent but still communicative, something that seems threatening as much because of its beauty as its dark side — something that builds bridges between different perceptions of time.
The exhibition was on view until March 30, 2017 at xpon-art, Respoldstraße 45, 20097 Hamburg. Opening hours: Saturday and Sunday 12:00–18:00, Monday–Tuesday 18:00–21:00.